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the MAMA of ella

email me!if you'd like to ask me a question or pass along an idea, please email rowena@ella-echo.com. i'm always thrilled to hear from readers, and i read every single message--but not always right away. a few days may pass before you hear back from me. it's not personal, i promise. :)

August 17, 2011

study unit: daedalus and icarus

this was the first study unit we did under the new "plan" i put together for ella this year. it was an unconditional HIT.

the story she was most interested in when we were choosing was the myth of daedalus and icarus, which is actually from the 2nd grade core knowledge book, but we had not covered it yet. as always, there were more possibilities than we could fit into a single week! editing is always my weak point :) so i made a list of everything we COULD do, then each day i chose what we WOULD do based on what appealed to her most or what seemed appropriate given the weather, our existing schedule, our energy level that day, etc.--trusting that that the story and the activities themselves were rich enough to provide plenty of learning without any additional "enrichment".

social studies: ella wanted to know about the land that was named for icarus--ikaria (sometimes spelled "icaria"). after quite a search we finally located the island of ikaria on the map, learned some history, and made a small flag to start our flag bunting.

ella's embellishment is on the back--a prayer for the people of ikaria. this has become a tradition for her with each flag we've made.

vocabulary: on a printout of the story from bulfinch i let ella mark each word that she was not familiar with.

next i let her choose a word to look up in the dictionary, i showed her how to look things up alphabetically, and had her make a file card for that word. she figured out how to look up words with just one demonstration, and enjoyed this project so much that she worked for almost THREE HOURS the first time, just writing out vocabulary cards.

then i showed her how to file them in the card box, so now she has her own custom vocabulary list. on the back of each card i made note of where she first encountered that word, and my hope is that as she finds each one in other stories she will remember and be able to add to the list of stories and books on the back.

visual art: bruegal's painting "landscape with the fall of icarus" (seen at the top of this post). an excellent printable image of this painting is available by clicking the image at the wikipedia site.

another good printable is available at the artchive website (click the image viewer).

we don't "study" music, we listen to it and think about it and spend some deliberate time with it but we don't "do" a lot with it. appreciating it seems worthy enough a goal to me.

science: we have a small collection of bird feathers that i had ella sort according to whatever made sense to her, then had her explain the various arrangements she had chosen (the purpose here is to observe, sort, categorize, describe, reexamine, and reinterpret). her categories were:

the evening after we looked up ikaria and read about the history of the island, the daily show happened to do a segment on the recent economic unrest in greece. most of it was over ella's head but she did recognize the flag! she was so excited, because now this place was REAL and she could see regular people there. happy.

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study unit: daedalus and icarus

this was the first study unit we did under the new "plan" i put together for ella this year. it was an unconditional HIT.

the story she was most interested in when we were choosing was the myth of daedalus and icarus, which is actually from the 2nd grade core knowledge book, but we had not covered it yet. as always, there were more possibilities than we could fit into a single week! editing is always my weak point :) so i made a list of everything we COULD do, then each day i chose what we WOULD do based on what appealed to her most or what seemed appropriate given the weather, our existing schedule, our energy level that day, etc.--trusting that that the story and the activities themselves were rich enough to provide plenty of learning without any additional "enrichment".

social studies: ella wanted to know about the land that was named for icarus--ikaria (sometimes spelled "icaria"). after quite a search we finally located the island of ikaria on the map, learned some history, and made a small flag to start our flag bunting.

ella's embellishment is on the back--a prayer for the people of ikaria. this has become a tradition for her with each flag we've made.

vocabulary: on a printout of the story from bulfinch i let ella mark each word that she was not familiar with.

next i let her choose a word to look up in the dictionary, i showed her how to look things up alphabetically, and had her make a file card for that word. she figured out how to look up words with just one demonstration, and enjoyed this project so much that she worked for almost THREE HOURS the first time, just writing out vocabulary cards.

then i showed her how to file them in the card box, so now she has her own custom vocabulary list. on the back of each card i made note of where she first encountered that word, and my hope is that as she finds each one in other stories she will remember and be able to add to the list of stories and books on the back.

visual art: bruegal's painting "landscape with the fall of icarus" (seen at the top of this post). an excellent printable image of this painting is available by clicking the image at the wikipedia site.

another good printable is available at the artchive website (click the image viewer).

we don't "study" music, we listen to it and think about it and spend some deliberate time with it but we don't "do" a lot with it. appreciating it seems worthy enough a goal to me.

science: we have a small collection of bird feathers that i had ella sort according to whatever made sense to her, then had her explain the various arrangements she had chosen (the purpose here is to observe, sort, categorize, describe, reexamine, and reinterpret). her categories were:

the evening after we looked up ikaria and read about the history of the island, the daily show happened to do a segment on the recent economic unrest in greece. most of it was over ella's head but she did recognize the flag! she was so excited, because now this place was REAL and she could see regular people there. happy.

HIATUS

I'M NOT HERE!

i am on indefinite hiatus from all my blogs. i will not be adding any original content for the foreseeable future. please feel free to surf around the blog--there are years worth of material here, much of which has been buried in the mists of time--but do not expect responses to emails or comments because i'm not here. :) thank you for your understanding.